Restrict specific fields in the response of rails controller

Question

I have a controller action like

def index
  @videos =  Video.all.to_a

  respond_to do |format|
    format.xml  { render :xml => @videos }
    format.json { render :json => @videos }
  end
end

Video has attributes name and title.

I want the return xml to contain only title.

How do I restrict it from the response.

Answer 1

Doing it like this:

def index
  @videos =  Video.all

  respond_to do |format|
    format.xml  { render :xml => @videos.to_xml( :only => [:title] ) }
    format.json { render :json => @videos.to_json( :only => [:title] ) }
  end
end

You can find more info about this at the serialization documentation.

Answer 2

You can use a select clause on your Video.all query, specifying the fields you want to include.

@videos = Video.select("id, name, title").all

Also, you shouldn't need to call to_a on your query.